Henry Allingham, one of the last surviving fighters of the Great War, will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, and he's got stories to tell too.
The Associated Press
November 9, 2008
London -- Henry Allingham is the oldest living link to the 9 million soldiers killed in World War I.

He is 112 now, nearly blind, mostly deaf and uses a wheelchair -- none of which stops him from trying to remind everyone of those long gone.

"I don't want to see them forgotten," he says quietly, speaking after the opening of a Royal Air Force Museum exhibition on the conflict. "We were pals."

For decades, Allingham didn't talk about the Great War. And then, after he hit 100, he made talking about it his mission -- the excitement at the start, the thrill of flying, the blood, the lice, the fear, the dead.

His next task is to lay a wreath at Britain's war memorial, the Cenotaph, near the houses of Parliament in London, to mark the 90th anniversary of the war's end. Allingham, Britain's last flier; Harry Patch, the last soldier; and Bill Stone, the last sailor, will lay wreaths on Tuesday.

They are the last ones standing, out of the more than 5 million who fought for Britain in World War I. The last survivors in Germany, France and Turkey have died, veterans groups said. The last living American-born veteran is 107-year-old Frank Woodruff Buckles of Charles Town, W.Va.

The dwindling of the ranks has given additional importance to this year's ceremonies, probably the last major anniversary in which they will be able to take part. It comes after a series of 90th-anniversary commemorations of the war's worst battles -- the Somme, Jutland, Ypres.

"This is the climax of something that has a momentum all its own," said William Philpott, a senior lecturer in the department of war studies at King's College in London.

Allingham doesn't talk much about other wars. But he does say in his memoir, "Kitchener's Last Volunteer," that he feels sorry for young soldiers fighting in Iraq.

"It was not the same in my war," he says. "We were fighting for our country and our homes. . . . We had a lot more to lose if we failed."

He takes your hand, covers it between his, until his long soft fingers make your hand disappear. He looks into your eyes, trying to remember if he's met you before.

He seems glad you've come. He has something to tell you.

"We have to pray it never happens again."

In a time when many wars take place far from home, it can be hard to imagine the war to end all wars. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne during his visit to Sarajevo in 1914 touched off a cataclysm that echoed into much of the ensuing century.

Allingham wanted to leave his job in a car plant and join up right away. But when his widowed mother learned of her only child's plans, she made him promise not to leave. Allingham spent the war's first months refitting trucks for military use.

After his mother died of cancer in 1915, Allingham joined the Royal Naval Air Service, a precursor to the Royal Air Force.

He was hoping to go to East Africa. He ended up on the east coast of England.

Only a dozen years after the Wright brothers first put up their plane at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Allingham and other air pioneers set out on elaborate kites cobbled together with wood, linen and wire. They piled on clothes and smeared their faces in Vaseline, whale oil or engine grease to block the cold.

"It was so noisy," Allingham would later write in his memoir. "I do remember the deafening throb and the chap on the ground shouting, 'Chock's away!' "

As a mechanic, Allingham's job was to maintain the rickety craft. He also flew as an observer on a BE2c, a plane with so little power that a strong wind might push it backward. At first, his weaponry consisted of a Lee-Enfield .303 rifle -- sometimes two. In a time of limited radio capability, the airmen flew with two carrier pigeons that would be released with coordinates tied to their feet in case of water landing, so searchers could track the wreckage. They weren't issued parachutes.

Published Date: 12 November 2008
In Flanders field a poppy from Roundhay will grow.

It is sponsored and dedicated by St Andrew's United Reformed Church in in Roundhay, in grateful memory of those who gave their lives in the First World War and in subsequent wars.

Rev David Pickering, minister of St Andrew's, said: "St Andrew's has donated to the Royal British Legion's planting of a Field of Poppies beside the Menin Gate in Ypres (Ieper) in Flanders in Belgium in time for the 90th anniversary, on Tuesday, of the end of First World War.
The dedication reads: "St Andrew's Roundhay United Reformed Church, Leeds remembers those in our family who gave their lives in the 1st World War and subsequent conflicts."

Rev Pickering added St Andrew's was packed with 300 people for its Remembrance Service.

"Our Two Minute Silence at St Andrew's was led by members of our congregation who were alive at the time of the Armistice on 11 November 1918."

Ninety years ago, on the November 11, 1918, World War One ended, after four years of conflict that took 20 million lives.

It was the first great war of the modern military age – a new kind of war with many nations pitted against each other.

A war of machines and chemicals, a war of new battle strategies that had produced the horrors of the rat and lice infested muddy trenches of the Western Front.

It included the battles at Gallipoli where 2701 New Zealand soldiers fell, and the bloodbath on the farm lands of Belgium at Passchendale where in the space of two hours 2800 of our soldiers were killed, wounded or listed as missing in action.

It is still called the Great War.

While there was huge relief and joy at the news of the armistice back here in New Zealand, the news came at a time when we were in the midst of another of the great calamities of that century.

One of the worst flu pandemics the world has seen was at its height between October and December 1918 and killed 8600 people, compared to the 18,500 New Zealand deaths for the entire four years of fighting in Europe.

With a population at that time of about 4200, Rodney lost 15 people to the illness. While armistice celebrations were held throughout the country, in Auckland the district health officer Dr Frenley banned official celebrations because any large gathering could spread the disease.

His concerns were well based as the disease spread significantly more in towns and cities that did hold celebrations.

In recent years, much of the focus has been on honouring the fallen at the Battles at Gallipoli and Passchendale, and Armistice Day has taken something of a back seat.

The significance of this historic event was not lost on the small band of people who gathered for a service and wreath laying at the Silverdale RSA on Tuesday at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, the exact time the Armistice came into effect 90 years ago.

UNITED IN SORROW: World War One veteran Harry Patch, 110, with Courtney Ellis, seven, whose dad Lee was killed in Iraq two years ago

Published Date:
12 November 2008
By Chris Wilkinson
A former Wigan Athletic trainee killed while serving as a soldier in Iraq has been hailed a hero by the last surviving "Tommy."
Lee Ellis' seven-year-old daughter Courtney was told her dad was a brave man she should be proud of by Harry Patch, 110, who fought in the trenches of the World War One.

Separated by more than 100 years they are, however, united in sorrow for those they have lost.
Lee, a promising goalkeeper and member of the youth team spent two years at the club. He was killed by a roadside bomb in 2006, aged just 23.

Harry, who lives in a nursing home in Somerset where he met Courtney, watched dozens of his friends fall alongside him at the Battle of Passchendale in 1917.
Harry told the little girl: "Your Daddy was a very brave man, you will always be proud of him.

But Henry Allingham had made a silent promise to absent friends and he wasn't about to let them down, not even at the age of 112.

So yesterday, in the bitter chill of a London morning, the oldest survivor of the Great War summoned all his fading strength to lay a wreath to the fallen.

He did so in person, by his own hand... and with a final, farewell kiss upon the flower that speaks for his generation.

The First World War airman, swaddled in a wheelchair and surrounded by countless willing helpers, struggled in vain to get to his feet at the Cenotaph for yesterday's Armistice Day ceremony.

But he refused to let go of the large poppy wreath until he was certain he could place it himself.

Slowly - and with countless eyes watching on TV screens across Europe - he bent forward to lay it on the ground at the foot of the memorial, with just moments to spare before the buglers sounded the Last Post at his side.

Of all the millions of men who made up the vast military machines fielded by Great Britain, Germany, France and the Empire in a war that ended 90 years ago yesterday, only four remain. Three were at the Cenotaph in Whitehall yesterday, to observe two minutes' silence for their fallen comrades.

The baby of the bunch was Bill Stone, born in Devon in September 1900, the tenth of 14 children, who was prevented by his father from joining the Royal Navy at the age of 15, but signed up on his 18th birthday. He was still in training when the the Great War ended but saw action during the invasion of Sicily in 1943, and stayed in the senior service until 1945.

Harry Patch, born in Combe Down, near Bath, in June 1898, followed his brothers into the plumbing trade, hoping the war would end before he was called up. His luck ran out in October 1916, and before he was 19, he was thrown into the slaughter of Passchendaele, and badly wounded by a shell that landed yards from him, killing three of his friends.

Henry Allingham, born in Clapton, east London, in June 1896, was persuaded by his mother not to volunteer in 1914, but joined the Royal Navy a year later, after she had died, and was in the Battle of Jutland. At 112 he is now the oldest man in Europe. "All those pals of mine, they should be here," he said yesterday. "This is the least I can do for them."